Looks like the the 2028 Olympic schedule has been released (also as PDF). What events are you going to attend/watch?
2028 Olympics Schedule
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Category Archives: Current Events
Thoughts on DOJ Breaking up Google
Last month, the news reported that the DOJ proposed to break up Google by “selling” off Chrome and Android in order to “fix” Google’s monopoly on search.
My initial thoughts were the proposed “fix” would have unintended consequences to the consumer and would not truly “fix” the real issue and reason why DOJ brought its case. To my understanding reading through various news sources, the DOJ is rightly concerned about Google’s practices in maintaining “search dominance.”
But let’s take a step back and look at what makes Google good. Back during the beginnings of the internet, I remember using various search engines like Yahoo, Lycos, Altavista, and even AskJeeves with varied success. In testing against Google, these other search engines never offered the link I wanted or satisfied my curiosity as quickly as Google did. That shows how powerful Google’s search algorithm is. Being able to monetize the best algorithm allowed Google to pretty much dominate search competition. Even now in 2024, if I use competing search engines like Bing or Duck Duck Go, Google’s algorithm still satisfy my curiosity by providing the most relevant link within the first five or so non-paid entries. I honestly believe that people will still end up choosing Google because it is a more superior search engine.
Now, back to the case, selling off Chrome would not fix Google’s dominance in search. I imagine Chrome to be more as a vehicle allows access to Google’s search. What the DOJ should instead be asking Google to do is…
1) remove default access to google search.
2) provide users with a choice of different search tools for use.
3) if the user ends up settling on Google Search, then after every Chrome update, the user should be presented with a choice again for different search tool or continuously confirm Google as the search provider.
This sort of solution makes it so that using Google’s search is conscious decision by the user and not some sort of paid default search. Let’s give the users a say in what they really want. With the government not knowing how Technology works, I am VERY pessimistic that they will make a decision that benefits the users.
With Android, to be honest, search is embedded into the OS. As an Android user, it is very convenient to search for things. I think DOJ is on the right track to prevent the auto loading of apps to the OS. Similar to the Chrome solution, Android (if the phone is not a Pixel or Google made/designed phone) should be promoting or letting users choose the various apps for use. They company that is making the phone most likely has their own suite of products that can be promoted. And since Android allows the use of different apps, the user should be given the option on what apps they want to use. Android might need to be fixed such that search is a modular part of the OS and can be interchangeable with different apps.
And finally, to prevent Google from abusing it’s monopoly on search, why can’t a simple rule be implemented that prevents Google from participating or buying its position as the default. Simultaneously there should also be a ban on Google from acquiring any search related technologies or companies. These two restrictions should help small search companies grow and/or at least find some niche market to compete against Google.
Thoughts on a recent podcast
I listen to quite a few podcasts during the week. Many of these podcasts are less than 30min. But I also listen to a handful of long-form podcast. One of those is “The Diary of a CEO.” The host (Steven Bartlett) does a magnificent job interviewing the different guests. Guests range from scientists to CEOs to even ex CIA operatives who offer a wide range of opinions and knowledge. Furthermore, the conversations are fascinating and thought provoking. The podcast also has a Youtube channel if one prefers to “watch” the interview.
Recently, Bartlett had Reid Hoffman (wiki) as a guest (watch here on youtube). Who is Hoffman? He is one of the members of the “PayPal Mafia” but might be more commonly recognized as the founder of LinkedIn.
Now why would I be so interested in even writing about this interview? One of the discussed topics centered around “censorship” and Hoffman’s thoughts about Twitter’s banning Trump (NPR).
But before I get to his thoughts, here are my thoughts about deplatforming in general.
1) One of the reasons America is “great” is the fact that everyone has a platform to speak about any issue and there would be very little retribution (i.e. being cancelled, getting doxxed) for speaking one’s mind. As much as I don’t like hate speech or speech that denigrates one tribe over another tribe, the opinions of the speaker are just opinions. I believe that the speakers SHOULD BE ABLE to speak their peace regardless of whether the speech is truthful, full of lies, full of hate, or flat out disrespectful and disparaging. I still believe that deplatforming Trump was the wrong move.
2) I also believe that ALL SPEECH needs to be monitored to be factual or at very minimum if there are opposing sides/stories that both sides are presented. What you say is what you believe but it might not be correct or factual. And this is where I think speech needs to be monitored. The choice should be up to the reader to confirm if what is stated is factual or not. America needs to raise a new generation of thinkers who should be able to decide on their own what is true and what is false.
3) I also beleive that speech with ANY THREAT of violence should NEVER BE TOLERATED. Regardless of if the THREAT of violence is hinted at, considered subversive or just overt declaration, this type of speech should be taken seriously and action to minimize the threat should be swift.
4) There still is a chance for all traditional and social media companies to “MAKE SPEECH GREAT AGAIN.” First to clearly implement speech policies that strictly forbids threats of violence while also implementing fact checking process on controverisal topics. Second to implement ways where fact checking policies allow readers to decide themself.
Back to the podcast, here’s a shortcut (click here) to Hoffman’s opinion about how speech should be handled. His idea represents a solid middle ground. I am happy that there are others who also believe that it is possible to have a society where speech can be balanced, safe, civil, and truthful. Hoffman goes further with the idea of freedom of speech vs freedom of reach and how differentiating between the two benefits society. Even contrarian and/or unpopular opinions should be heard by society, explored and thoroughly investigated by society, and then confirmed or debunked by society.
After thinking about this for the last few days, I pose this question to readers: Would a society that participates in the type of civil discourse (as imagined by Hoffman) become a better society overall?
AMERICA, DO BETTER!!!
It’s been over a week since Trump was projected to be re-elected. I’ve had conversations with friends about this and I thought I’d put my thoughts on paper.
First, I was raised to be respectful, to be honest, to speak the truth, to live a life of integrity and most importantly to strive to be a morally good person. I would never support Trump because Trump INVALIDATES everything on how I was taught and raised.
Supporting Trump and the “Trumpublican” party, you are invalidating these ideals of being respectful, being honest, being truthful, living with integrity and being a morally good person. By supporting Trump and the “Trumpublican” party, you are signaling that you accept the discord and strife that Trump and his echo chamber of Fox News/Tucker Carlson/Steven Miller/Steve Bannon/etc has brought to society. By supporting Trump and the “Trumpublican” party, you are signaling that you admire someone who lies constantly, someone who is seeking to benefit himself and his brand, and someone who is a rich narcissistic convicted pussy grabber.
I cannot support Trump because of his behavior and everything he represents goes against my own moral compass. I want to know the rationale of why someone raised to be honest, to be truthful… would want to vote for Trump. Is this what these 76M AMERICAN voters really want to idolize?! A narcissistic lying self-serving convicted pussy grabbing president?
Second, it’s frustrating to know 76M Americans support a lying toxic bastard… who openly calls to have his opponents shot for opposing him… who openly degrades, disrespects and bullies people… Who only seek to benefit his business/brand… Who isn’t a president I support.
Up until the 2016 election, I had always believed that the President of the United States needed to represent someone who can show the rest of the world how great America is… Someone who after the election isn’t mired in pettiness… Someone who wants to see and lead a freer, safer, richer US. Trump did none of that in his 1st term. And Trump’s 2nd term will be at best more of the same… At worst will be regarded in history as a dark 4 years.
If Trump gets his way with Project 2025, Americans will lose… Not immediately but Americans will lose their future. Americans will bear the brunt of his tariffs, leading to increased prices because companies pass on the cost to consumers (us). Americans could very likely lose even more rights over their own bodies. Americans will face an even larger police state all to “keep immigrants out”. The idea of a “blind justice” may be gone with the Trump administration actively pursuing people who oppose Trump. And protecting the environment will probably be an after thought.
Third, here’s a post election observation…
1) where are the claims that there’s “massive voter fraud” ?
2) where are the claims of a “rigged election”?
Here’s a secret…. There never was massive fraud and election rigging to begin. In 2020, Tump and Trumpublicans being the sore petulant losers that they are spread rumors about rigged elections and voting fraud. Yet when they win in 2024, the Trumpublicans magically trust the election system. That just means that the 2020 results never was about “massive voter fraud” or “rigged election” but a sore loser whining. Now that I think about it… Being able to whine and not receive any repercussion….. That’s called privledge.
Here’s a question… after spending YEARS denouncing the government, are Trumpublicans now going to ask the public to “trust the government”? If so, it just means that Trumpublicans cared only about winning at all costs... even going so far as denouncing their own government report as well as breaking govermental norms. I would propose that breaking of norms escalated when McConnell wouldn’t even allow the Senate to entertain any hearings for SCOTUS nominee (Merrick Garland) during the 2016 election year while expediting another SCOTUS nominee (Amy Barrett) was quickly ushered in 2020 election. This winner take all attitude leading to strife and discord only energizes Trump even more.
Fourth, I’m curious how many people voted. As of 13NOV2024, according to CNN…
2024: 76M Trump vs 73M Harris
2020: 81M Biden vs 74M Trump
2016: 62M Trump vs 65M Clinton
2012: 65M Obama vs 61M Romney
2008: 69M Obama vs 59M McCain
Here’s a conspiracy theory of voter repression… where’s the missing 8M Biden Voters?
Fifth, this whole concept of “rigged election” really got me thinking. Listening to various politics podcast, there’s been a lot of discussion around legislative and congressional/electoral maps. I’ve learned that different states implement different methods to draw these maps and the the majority of the maps that are drawn are generally gerrymandered to favor Republicans or Democrats depending on the state. Else the maps are drawn by an independent commission which might also be subject to influence by Democrat or Republican leaning members. I’ve also learned that Republicans have been making pushes to control the state legislature over the past two decades. Looking at the overall US 2020 electoral map by county (below), it’s not hard to see Democrats are populated around major cities and along the coasts. But every where OUTSIDE the cities is predominantly Republican. Thus a majority of the states are Republican strongholds. So by saying it’s a rigged election, Trump is actually right. The Republicans have rigged the electoral maps to win. So if they don’t win, then something broke the rigged system. How’s that for conspiracy theory!?
From Wikimedia Commons (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2020_Election_Results_Map_by_County.png)
And finally, the last thing I can really think of is this…
AMERICA,
(WE CAN) DO BETTER!!
Thoughts on US vs Amazon Trial
The FTC is out for blood! First Google and now Amazon. My understanding of the case against Amazon is that Amazon has become a monopoly and abused it’s market leading status to maintain dominance and hurt the competition.
I will say that I use Amazon frequently. I used to be an Amazon Prime member but I opted to stop membership because I didn’t see any additional benefit. The 2-day shipping was a nice benefit, but with careful planning normal shipping was equally acceptable for me as well. Plus, by going with normal shipping, it not only broke the vicious dopamine reward cycle of buying and getting packages practically next day but also saved me more money since I had to think about whether or not I really needed that item. Plus, many of the percieved benefits to Amazon Prime were “Nice to Have” for me. So I cancelled membership.
Over the years of using Amazon, I have two major issues with Amazon. First, Amazon allows any/all vendors who wish to sell goods. So many of these goods tend to be low priced items from OEM manfuacturers in China that US companies source to get their goods from. What ends up happening is there are multiple “knock offs” of a similar US brand/model that flood the market. With so much choice, it’s hard to even know what to buy because sometimes the Chinese made products by these OEM manufacturers are worse than the OEM manufacturers with US partners. I try to support American companies selling through Amazon but it’s tough trying to find a proper product. Second, Amazon using customer data to also get “in on the market.” Over the years, I’ve noticed Amazon selling their own “Amazon branded” merchanidse whether it’s clothes, office supplies, common electronics and even food items. Amazon’s participation in this market pushes out the small business owners.
I believe Amazon should have a duty to promote US owned and operated companies. Companies should be forced to have a presence in US and pay US taxes if they wish to sell to US consumers. I also believe Amazon should NOT be participating as a seller competing against the other small business owners. I think it’s great that Amazon provides a platform to the business owners seeking an e-commerce revenue source. I also think it’s great that Amazon even provides the inventory and supply chain logistics for small business owners. And in return the business owners pay a fee. However, does Amazon currently pay a fee to itself to store, list, pack Amazon branded products online? I’d be curious to know.
I think Amazon is marching slowly towards a vertical ecommerce integration. First they have the Amazon ecommerce platform. They also built and market their own server and hardware services for other web based platforms. Then they introduced to small business owners the ability to maintain inventory without the warehouse overhead AND also introduce logistical/supply chain management by packing/shipping products to customers. Then they expand into making their own brands of customer goods from clothes to food to electronics. Although Amazon probably will be unable to own manufacturing companies, Amazon’s sheer size allows them to control the manufacturers. Then utilizing the ecommerce platform, inventory management and supply chain logistics, Amazon can easily outsource, outcompete any small business owner.
My solution to Amazon’s problem would be
!) Amazon should just be forced to ONLY provide the tools for ecommerce and not be allowed to participate in it. I believe that will be good for small business competition and is in line with US’s view of “capitalism.”
2) Amazon voluntarily requires foreign sellers list their US base of operations to ensure US taxes can be paid. It woud not affect current US business owners selling on Amazon nor would it affect US owners thinking about selling on Amazon. This requirement would then force foreign OEM manufacturers to spend money/time/resources on establishing an office in US so that taxes can be paid to local, state and federal governments.
Thoughts on US vs Google Trial
For transparency, I minimized using Google Search for at least 3 years now by choice. I predominantly use Duck Duck Go as my search engine for both Chrome and Firefox. I made the switch mainly to minimize any sort of Google tracking on my PC after listening to a podcast related to tracking and the amount of data we give up. I have other privacy focus extensions like Privacy Badger, HTTPS and Adblock Plus. I have thought about other ways to minimize tracking further on PC there’s this one little issue. I use Google Pixel phones. I am also incorporated into the Android/Google ecosystem. So if there’s any tracking to be involved, there’s absolutely know effective way to minimize the tracking from my mobile usage. I have also thought about other ways to minimize tracking on my phone but to adopt them becomes very onerous. So… settling for minimizing PC based tracking was the “middle ground” for me.
Back to my thoughts…. In 2020, the Justice Department accused Google for it’s monopolistic behavior in maintaining dominance in “search.” This anti-trust lawsuit is groundbreaking and I think bigger than the Microsoft lawsuit from 2001 The implications will have a long lasting effects (positive, negative, intended and unintended). Last month (can’t believe it’s October already), the trial started. Today, while going through my daily check of news, The Verge (in big bold letters) offered an interesting snippet from Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella that I clicked on to read (click bait does work!!). There was one line in the snippet that caught my attention was that…Nadella would “do anything to make Bing better.”
So why is this statement interesting to me? Would Apple switching to Bing really have made a difference? I’ve been using Duck Duck Go for at least 3 years. Before that, Google was the default search engine. During these past three years, there have been a few situations where Duck Duck Go’s search algorithm DID NOT produce the results I hoped for. These were specific search results that I knew something existed but didn’t know the actual search term to generate the result. When this happens for Duck Duck Go, it takes additional two to three subsequent page scrolls to find what I’m looking for. But when I use Google, I tend to find what I want within the first page. I think this demonstrates that Google’s search has a much better algorithm. But…. over the three years of using Duck Duck Go, there have been only a few situations where I needed Google’s search bar. That fact also demonstrates that search doesn’t have to be Google all the time. I know… REVOLUTIONARY.
I think the only reason why Google maintains its position at the top of search is not only because of its search engine being better than any thing else in market but also in some part being able to pay/maintain its position at the top of search. Admittedly, Google has put out great products that people use on a daily basis. The only gripe I have is the intrusion of more sponsored/paid advertisment that comes through any search terms across their products. Google should take a step back and reconsider how the display the targetted ads. Perhaps a two column search where one side is the targetted ads and the other is just purely algorithm based search.
My thoughts on Goole would be
1) Allow Google to maintain ads ecosystem.
2) Bar Google or any other company from paying money to be the search preference. Bar any retaliatory effects for choosing one search over another. If US consideres itself to be capitalistic, then it should allow companies to “fight it out fairly” without influence of money.
3) Paid advertisements should not be listed/embedded alongside algorithmic generated search results. At the moment, none of the search companies do a good job separating algorithm results vs paid results. I propose that a separate list be generated along side that shows the sponsored ads. This could be easily done by creating a two column search result. Search results already embed content in two columns already so it shouldn’t be that much more difficult to expand on.
PAC-12 Football is no more.
If you follow college football, there’s been a huge shift in conference membership. All but two schools (OSU, WSU) in the current PAC-12 conference have jumped to other conferences. Stanford and CAL Berkeley have joined the ACC (Atlantic Coast Conference). UCLA, USC, Oregon, and Washington have joined the BIG10. Colorado, Utah, Arizona and ASU have joined BIG12.
My take?
I think the schools that leave will become bottom feeders for their respective conferences. It can’t be good for a west coast team that has to travel to the east coast to play games. The west coast team will not only need to fight travel fatigue but also any timezone jetlag. But in reality the schools don’t care as long as they get money. All these schools are leaving in order to chase the lucrative TV money in these markets.
Here are some articles that talk about how BIG MONEY has taken over college football. To say that money hasn’t taken over football would be a gross understatement.
It’s disappointing to read about the failed PAC12 x ESPN deal (~$30M per school). The PAC12 schools clearly didn’t realize how much they were actually worth when compared to the other conferences. In my opinion, the PAC12 teams are too equal in terms of football parity where any school can upset other schools on any given Saturday. Because of the overall parity in the conference, I view all the PAC12 schools to be a half or full step behind the other powerhouse elite schools like Alabama, LSU, and Ohio State. If the PAC12 teams were to have consistently reach and win the Football National Championship then perhaps there would be a case for $50M instead of $30M. Winners get to make all the money. And clearly ESPN didn’t think they were winners worth $50M.
Egads…
Happy New Year 2023
2022 came and went by pretty fast.
2023 comes with new plans and goals.
The Ocean Cleanup in LA
Have you heard of the “Great Garbage Patch” in the Pacific? Did you know that there is a company “The Ocean Cleanup” dedicated to cleaning up this garbage, to recycling the plastic and finding ways to reuse the collected plastics. This mission to clean up the ocean is admirable and I support them through yearly donations. You can request a donation receipt as well by selecting the topic of “Donation Receipt”. In the future, I hope they will be able to use the plastic collected to make more than just sunglasses like plastic bottles and items that contain mix use of plastics and metals. And yes, I even bought the sunglasses and blogged about it.
Through various research organizations, the Ocean Clean Up organization observed that one of the sources comes from the rivers that flow into the ocean. During periods of heavy rain, plastics that have been discarded upstream/upriver get washed into the ocean. As a way to counter the plastics that end up in the ocean, the Ocean Clean Up team also started to collect plastics that come from the rivers. One such collection effort can be found in LA. Known as Interceptor 007, it is located at the mouth of the Ballona Creek at Marina Del Rey. They even broadcasted live the “maiden voyage” to position the Interceptor at the mouth of the creek and the rationale to deploy in LA.
I need to find some time to take a stroll down to Ballona Creek to take pics.
Free Money? Sounds sus….
In this day and age, I have been so conditioned to view items in bank statements with a lot of suspicion EVEN WHEN it’s in my favor. With all the different ways an account can be hacked (like phishing) or different money fraud schemes (nespresso pods), seeing this entry on my bank account sparked a little concern. You see… I wasn’t expecting to get any free money (at least not on this account).
So naturally I asked these questions:
1) What is this? Have I been hacked?
2) Why am I getting free money? Nothing is free…
Fortunately, a Google search shows that this is a legitimate credit from California.
A Guy and His Thoughts... 
